The Wheel of Time - S03E04 - The Road to the Spear

[00:00:00] The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. In one podcast, called The Lorehounds by Some, a weekly recap with tons of analysis, two Wheel of Time superfans will lead you through a world of powerful magic, tricky prophecies, and cutthroat politics. Join me, John, and my co-host Alicia for weekly coverage of Season 3 by searching your podcast app for The Lorehounds.

[00:00:27] Dov'yandi se tovas again. It's time to roll the dice.

[00:00:53] Welcome to The Lorehounds coverage of The Wheel of Time Season 3, Episode 4, The Road to the Spear. I'm Alicia, who comes with the podcast. And I am the John Reborn. And this, for most of this episode, it's going to be spoilers, of course, through Season 3, Episode 4, and equivalent book stuff, but not future book stuff. Although, John and I, you and I have read the books. We will be coy for most of the podcast. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:01:22] Although, I don't know. There's enough to talk about in this episode. I don't even think I'll be tempted. No, it's true. But we did stick around until after the outro music for our White Tower Talk, where we've pulled aside a few points with full series book spoilers that we can discuss. Yeah, so Episode 4, it was one of the most anticipated of the entire series based on the books. And John, how do you think they did?

[00:01:49] I can remember reading this set of scenes, particularly the Rand part. Mm-hmm. You know, I can remember the first time I read it and just feeling like chills as I'm reading it. And I felt chills watching this. Yeah. I just think that they really, really nailed this in a way that I was worried they wouldn't because it is such a weird thing to have this like walking back through time. Right.

[00:02:15] And I, you know, this is where I'm like, I can comment on TV. I can criticize TV. Mm-hmm. But I can't make TV. I don't have that skill set. Like these people are on another level and they absolutely nailed that part. That was, you know, I've said that the Aiel is something that they need to nail on the show to really make the show sing. Mm-hmm. And they're doing it. I have no complaints on how they're handling the Aiel, especially these flashbacks, especially the backstory.

[00:02:45] I thought that they had a really interesting set of changes that they added and that sort of play on character motivation and aren't just see what we can change to make it more interesting, right? Like they are things that actually will make a difference in character motivations and sort of enhance the tension between those character relationships. So I'm thrilled with this. It looks beautiful. The costume people are doing an amazing job, especially with Yosha going through.

[00:03:13] A million costumes in this episode. Yeah, and prosthetics and him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The makeup and hair. Like if I didn't know it was definitely him, I might be fooled a couple times. Some of them are obviously him, but some of them are just like, ooh. Yeah. I was a little wary of what they're doing with the Kodun Kahl kind of stuff. I probably shouldn't say that. Well, no, you know, actually we will talk about the facts that they are very clearly, the Kodun Kahl is a thing in the books. It seems clear to me that it is not a thing in the show.

[00:03:43] And they have the Terangryol, the objects of power that have a specific purpose. They seem to be condensing them. Or the Saangryol, I should say. The ones that magnify the ability to channel. Yeah, I think they're completely writing it out at this point. Yeah. Which is, I was a little wary. And then I was like, you know what? It's another layer that we probably don't need in the show, especially if we're condensing. So go for it. What's your favorite change?

[00:04:11] Actually, my favorite change, other than the one that I said that was wrong, that I had to delete from this podcast, was Moraine's visions and the way that they brought flicker flicker into this whole thing. Because I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, you only get three visions in the book, in the women's arches. Yeah, I mean, I think they definitely... It's more limited. Right, it's more limited.

[00:04:41] It's more akin to what they go through in the accepted test. Right. Um, but yeah, I, so I thought for anyone who doesn't, is not a book reader, flicker flicker is a thing that there's this whole other element of the books called the portal stones, which have clearly been written out of the show. And I get it. They're not used enough. And yeah, there's just too much, too much lore. Um, so in the portal stones, something that would have happened last season is this, where

[00:05:09] they travel and they get all these flicker flickers of different possible futures. And so, yeah, I think we got a taste of that last season with Matt seeing his possible futures after he drank that tea in foam. Um, and we definitely now got that with Moraine. And, uh, yeah, we don't get to find out what Avienda saw yet, but, uh, that I'm sure that was interesting too. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, what's your hot take? Um, I, my notes here are just, they did it.

[00:05:38] Um, I, yeah, I mean, I think. They, they pulled together all this story. I'll be interested to hear, um, how easy people found this to follow. I mean, I think this is an episode that's made to be watched more than once. I'm pretty sure the first time I read this in the books, I read through it more than once. Um, yeah, it's just a lot of information. We're going to be talking through it as we go in chronological order to sort of help people sort through the order of events.

[00:06:07] But, uh, it's just, uh, absolutely incredible. And I keep thinking especially about the last vision Ren sees the earliest in the timeline when the boar opens. And I just think they nailed that, um, with the charum, the floating sphere thing and, and the boar. Is that what they're calling it? Well, I mean, the showroom's what it's called in the books. I, I don't know if they named it here. Yeah. I, I didn't even remember that. I was thinking of it as a Death Star.

[00:06:35] Um, which, which version of the Death Star is this? Is this the Death Star 3? Uh, yeah, well, it does. It tears open the, it doesn't kill Alderaan, but it tears open the sky. Yep. And that was just so well done. So well done. Can I just add, I, I think it, it had the same evil vibe as Ren's wound. And I love that. Yeah. True. It's like jagged evil. I think that that's such a good visualization of the dark ones. Right.

[00:07:06] Sorry. That was childish of me to giggle at the word. You know, it's funny because look, every time I've described the plot to my wife, every time I say taint, she's like, really? That's what he called it. But I'm like, well, it's only recently that we've become so potty minded about that word. Right. It's just, it literally just means, yeah, corrupted. Right. But yeah, no, it was, I think I was talking to a friend of mine and, you know, he knows I've seen the episode.

[00:07:34] Obviously I don't tell him what's happening, but everybody, you know, the super fans out there know going in that this is episodes going to be about this because Rafe Judkins told us. Oh, I didn't know that. I just figured based on watching episode three that we were going to do this, this episode. Well, we knew that Rafe Judkins, so he's, Rafe Judkins is a showrunner for anyone who doesn't know.

[00:07:57] And he actually wrote this episode and he also wrote the pilot for season one and the season one and two finales, which are not three of the best received episodes. But I have to say those other episodes were written under duress where, you know, sort of all of those face problems where it's like, now you have to change things last minute. And so I think that's why he gets the writing credit for those because he's like, oh shit, how do I do this? You know?

[00:08:27] He's the one calling shots on the fly. Right. Exactly. And I think this is the first episode we've seen from him where he was really given the space. He's like, I'm going to do a thing. And they're like, all right, we'll stand back and let you do your thing. Right. All right. Cool. Yeah. This is where we finally get to see what he can really do. And he did it. Did the thing. He did it. Yeah. So before, oh, and just to shout out the director of this one is Thomas Napper, who

[00:08:53] also directed episode three of this season and the first two episodes of season two. And also the recent film, The Widow Clicquot, which is for wine nerds. That's a thing. Anyway. Okay. The episode was one hour and six minutes long. But before we get into it, I actually want to jump back and talk about a couple of notes from the first three episodes, just because so you and I are recording these in advance before they come out, before we have access to subtitles.

[00:09:23] I should say that's one of the most annoying things I found in this episode, especially I'm like, how do you spell these names? Please write them down for me. And before, yeah, we get to see like people's reactions to it and stuff. So now that the first three episodes are out there and I've seen them with subtitles, et cetera, et cetera. I just wanted to bring up a couple of things that I noticed or were pointed out to me. The first one is from the cold open in season two with more gays when we see her have the

[00:09:52] throats slit of her rivals. So it turns out that she had the throats slit by members of their own household, which I didn't notice. Yeah. Wow. That is both cold and like incredibly smart in an evil way. Yeah. Like have your house take responsibility for it. Right. And I think they, if I recall correctly, they had male members of the household take out the women.

[00:10:18] And so at one point, the younger girl, I thought she was yelling out mother, you know, like mother save me, you know, but actually she was like, no brother, because her brother killed her, but we didn't have the subtitle. So I didn't, I'm a scared. Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering. Yeah. Also a couple fun snakes and foxes Easter eggs. So they were playing the snakes and foxes game in the tavern and that's a, an important in universe game. I assume at some point they'll explain the roles of it.

[00:10:46] But just a, it's like chess, but you can't win. But it was also pointed out to me that the bracelet that, that a Elida is wearing has snakes and foxes on it. Ooh. So we're going to, yeah. So we're going to come back to that in our white tower talk at the end. Uh, just have some, uh, theories about that.

[00:11:11] Also, I want to say that, uh, Elida, speaking of Elida, she definitely set up men to tell Swan about, you know, oh, they're going to go after Rand so that Swan would send Sutama out of the tower and Elida could take her seat in the hall. Yeah. Yeah. I buy it. Yeah. I buy it. Uh, also Elaine, she sent out, we saw her send out two letters and we know one went to an ally in tear, you know, saying like, be nice to Rand.

[00:11:40] And the other one, she said, send to my mother, put it in my mother's hands only. Um, so first of all, the two letters that of course reminds a lot of book readers about two letters that she sends to someone else in the show. Sorry. In the books. Uh, but do you think she called her mother to the tower? You think Elaine called her mother to the tower? Do you think Elaine called her mother to the tower? What do you think was in that letter to her?

[00:12:08] Oh, I think, I think maybe just telling her what happened. I don't think she expected to see her. Okay. It did seem like she didn't, she was kind of genuinely surprised in the next episode. Yeah. Yeah. But also, I don't think that she wanted her mom to come because I think she would have feared like, oh, she's going to have me come back. Right. Right. Okay. Uh, and one final thing I want to point out is that when Matt is, you know, he has the yellow sisters working on him, trying to figure out what's going on with his memories.

[00:12:37] Uh, one of them is Rima who we last saw getting collared after her water was killed in that really emotional fight last season. Well, good for her for escaping. Yes. So I guess they, they took out the Sean Chan and she came back. We don't know. I guess Megan, the blue died. I don't know. Probably. Well, maybe we'll see her again. Who knows? Maybe we'll see her again. Yeah. Okay. But let's talk about the, the new episode.

[00:13:05] Uh, so our six minutes long, we're going to be grouping revelations by topic, talking through the histories in chronological order to compliment the episode, which obviously the episode did it in the order that the books do it, but we're going to talk through chronological order to help you make sense of things. Um, starting with the history of Rand. And as it turns out, it's intertwined with Karian. Do you want to give us this backstory? Sure.

[00:13:32] Rand tells land everything he knows about his parentage. Tam Malthor, the father who raised him was a soldier, a blade master who settled back in the two rivers after taking him in. He told, he taught him meditation techniques to use the bow, but raised him to be a sheep herder in the mountains. That's the life. He knows he may look like an aisle have the blood of the aisle, but he is not one of them yet.

[00:13:58] We learned more about the circumstances of Rand's birth from Marine before Rand was born. Her uncle layman was the King of carry Kyrian that, you know, that is the name that most tripped me up in the book. And then the audio book and I was like, okay, come on. Okay. I still, I mean, I still have, you know what it is for me? It's Cad Swain, who is an important eyes that I mentioned in my head. She will always be Cad Suana. I like that version better.

[00:14:25] He decided to cut down a tree given to his kingdom by the aisle 400 years earlier, a hugely important gesture of friendship triggering the aisle war aisle streamed over the mountain range known as the spine of the world into the Westlands to hunt down layman and his sisters. The final battle in which layman was killed took place just outside Tarvalon on Dragon Mount, the mountain created by the death of Luz Theron, the previous dragon.

[00:14:52] One of the women there was heavily pregnant, fighting well in labor as seen in the cold open of season one, episode seven. There she gave birth to Rand, fulfilling the prophecy of the dragon's rebirth. And Tamal Thor, a soldier in the army fighting against the aisle, thinking he was rescuing the child from dying in the cold, took the baby home to raise with his wife in the two rivers.

[00:15:16] So lots of great, great stuff there in terms of, you know, we, we got the flame in the void explanation, which is a big thing in the books about how Tam taught Rand this sort of meditation technique about feeding all of his emotions into the flame until it's just the void left. And that helps him concentrate. And, and, you know, when he's fighting, um, yeah, I would have loved to have seen a flashback with Tam saying it himself though.

[00:15:46] Well, yeah, but then you got to hire the actor for a day and then he's, I doubt, I doubt they want to hire him for just a short scene. They probably want to hire him only if they're going to bring him back for a while. Yeah. But they have this whole plot in the two rivers and he should be there. So I'm assuming maybe he's busy or. Yeah. He's probably busy. Yeah. He was probably busy. Mm hmm. So if there's a season four, we better see him back. Please have a season four. I've been, I've been blue sky about it.

[00:16:15] I've been trying to rally the fantasy troops. Yes, exactly. Yeah. We're going to bring all the other fantasy fans to the light. Yep. We got it. Um, and we also learn bear says in this episode, Rand's mother is not originally of the IEL as much as it might look like that when we see her fight, but his father was. Um, she has red hair though. That's why everybody was confused. She does have red hair. Yeah.

[00:16:45] It seems like, and then there's also, we know Elaine's family. Uh, Elaine has red hair because Avianda made that comment in the previous episode too. Like you already have the look of an IEL. Right. We're not, I mean, we're not being tricky. It's not that like Elaine is IEL or something. It's just, it turns out that more people have red hair too. Also, they're not really being, I think that would be my one criticism of how they're portraying the IEL. It's not, not quite as mono red as, uh, as you would think for everyone to go like red and

[00:17:15] you look like an IEL. You know what I mean? Right. Like if you're going to have that whole thing, like you must be IEL cause you have red hair, then you have to like have the IEL notably be red haired. Yeah. I mean, but I think they are notably red haired, but it's also, it would be really unnatural if they all had just like the same color hair. That's not how it works. It's the same way. Like people, like people tell me all the time. I look like I'm Irish just because I have reddish hair, but it's not that every single Irish person has it. Yeah.

[00:17:43] But the IEL are much more insular than the Irish were. Um, well, the Irish were constantly getting conquered. Well, the Irish were actually amongst the British Isles. They were the most insular because they were like another step over to get to. So they, but they, but they also had a lot of like conquering times over history. I do think there's a difference meaningfully between those two populations. Plus like, I always say like fantasy genetics are not real world genetics.

[00:18:12] Like we can do what we want. We have old gear. I mean, but I, I would be really unhappy if they, I already complain in the books about the fact that like they have the red heads in the desert. Okay. And, and if you trace it back to, you know, the, we see in this episode, they, they were the servants of the, um, of the, uh, sorry, I said, I, and so they lived in the major cities. So they must've intermarried. Fair enough. Fair enough. Hmm.

[00:18:42] Um, yeah. Yeah. And one complaint I have about both the books and the show is the Rand never talks about his adoptive mother, whose name is Kari, by the way, they didn't say it this episode, but, uh, I don't know, I guess they don't want to throw out too many names. Yeah, I guess so. I, again, I will say my, my running complaint in the show every now and then is just that they don't trust the audience enough. Well, we got, we, I mean, we'll talk feedback, uh, after this episode, but we got some feedback

[00:19:12] that it's diff, the show is difficult to follow because there's too many people. And I've heard that from other people as well. So. Okay. All right. Well, maybe I'm too trusting. Well, you also, you, you know, the lore. So to you, you're like, oh, well, why are they cutting some of the lore out? Well, no, it's just like, I'm watching Severance at the same time. And that's a show that like absolutely trusts his audience and will go weird as fuck with it. Yeah. Yeah. Go weird as fuck, but which they did this episode.

[00:19:38] They went weird as fuck, but Severance has a finite number of characters you have to track and wheel of time, even though they've cut back drastically has so many more. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. But yeah, Kari, I just hear Marilyn's voice in my head, like, oh, dead mother trope. And she's not wrong there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we're the woman always dies. Trope is something that the show has reckoned with since episode one. Uh, it's, it's gotten better and I'll leave it at that.

[00:20:08] Well, I mean, yeah, the Kari thing comes straight from the book. So, yeah, no, I know. I just mean the, the. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Karen's wife. Yeah. Yeah. Um, people apparently I've seen lots of people bitching online about Moraine's hat. I'm like, I don't have a problem with Moraine's hat. I don't know why people aren't bitching about Moraine's hat, but, uh, Okay. I'm going to give an outsider perspective. Uh huh. I was watching this. My wife was playing her little video game, tiny, tiny glade, which is something where she just builds little towns.

[00:20:37] And I'm watching this on my laptop next to her. And she just out of the corner of her eyes sees Moraine's laugh. Sorry, Moraine's hat. And she starts bursting out laughing. She's like, what is that? What is that? Like 2010 hat? You know what I mean? Like, this is not, this is not in a fantasy universe. And I, I kind of agree. I kind of agree. It was a silly costume. I mean, I think, yeah, for people are like, why is Moraine dressed like they are?

[00:21:04] You know, I'm like, because Moraine is still at her heart, a princess of Karian. Um, is that a princess hat though? I just think, I just think it was a bad costume and call it. We don't have to linger on it. You know? Yeah. But I think overall, like some people are saying, oh, well, the clothing is too futuristic. And we have to keep in mind that this is our future as well as our past. It's more, it's closer to our future than it is to our past. But we'll talk about that in our timeline lore episode. Yeah.

[00:21:31] At the same time, like it just didn't vibe with anything else we've seen in the show. So I'm like, um, let's just, again, like it's a minor costuming mess up. I just, I just think it would, it would have been better as something else, but that's all right. Yeah. Yeah. Fair. People hate the hat. I don't hate the hat. It's a, yeah, it is what it is. Um, but speaking of Moraine, so we learn about Lamont's sin, as you were just explaining,

[00:21:57] you know, the, the cutting down of this tree that we're going to be talking about more this episode. And I just want to point out that this not only led to the political ruin of his own family, Moraine's family, which is why we saw last season that, you know, Moraine was saying they were from a disgraced house and things like that. And, uh, her nephew was doing dark things to try to get back in power. Uh, but also it led to the financial ruin of his country because this breaking of the

[00:22:27] pact, the, the treaty, the friendship that they had with the IEL cut off their most important trade route. So this is also why we saw, um, last season that the four gates was overrun with, you know, sort of a shanty town of, of poor people. It's not great. They, man, rulers, rulers can get super vain, huh? Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Lamont was, was also the worst.

[00:22:56] We'll talk about him a little more in the timeline episode, but he's like, before he even did this whole tree thing, he was picking fights with Andor and he was just, yeah, really a small man who wanted to have a big ego. I, I got a, when we, when we talk about him again, I should get a clip of John Ralphio from Parks and Rec going, he's the worst. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Should we take a quick break here and then come back and talk more about what we learned this episode?

[00:23:25] Let's do it. All right. We learned some things about the Aiel way. Do you want to set us up? I would like to set us up.

[00:23:55] Moraine and Egwene take tea with the Aiel wise ones, Bear and Malaine. By the way, I'm always going to have her as Amos in my head. Yeah. Oh, I have, um, I heard rumors about why they went with Bear, but we'll talk about that in a minute. Okay. All right. Who explain important elements of Aiel culture, including the concepts of Gai Shine and Ji. They explain that the trial of the wise ones in Ruidian shows them many futures.

[00:24:21] So they knew there would be a 50% chance that Ran, Moraine and Lan would come. And that would be, it would be disastrous if they didn't. We find out that Avienda has been called to become a wise one, but instead ran away looking for the Karakarn. Now that she has found him, it's time for her to face her duty. Bear takes her spears and breaks them.

[00:24:45] And Avienda asks for, and is given permission to go to Ruidian to face the wise ones trial. We meet some members of the hostile Shido clan who have also come to Ruidian to be the new would-be clan chief, Muradin. He has already gone into the glass columns and his brother, Kuladin, waits with their new stepmother, the wise one, Savannah, and the rest of the clan present.

[00:25:11] Rand must ask all the wise ones present to go to Ruidian to face his trial. And even Savannah grants it, despite Kuladin's protestation. Moraine, after being tipped off by Malaine that her own trial showed her a better outcome if Moraine faced the trial of the wise ones, asks leave to go to Ruidian as well, and it is granted.

[00:25:38] So, how perfect does Savannah look, by the way? Yeah, I mean, I can't say much about why she looks perfect, but yeah, I think good casting. Yeah, I mean, she has this energy and she's captivating to look at. Just the way they dressed her, the way the actress looks, they just, yes, she's giving me Savannah completely. And Kuladin's also exactly the hot-headed bastard, I would expect. Yes, yes.

[00:26:08] He was good casting. Budget Jason Momoa is doing a great job. Is he Budget Jason Momoa? He kind of is. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. I see it. I see it. I'm glad they didn't bring in Jason Momoa, though. That would be distracting. I agree. I agree. As someone who has said they need to have more no-name actors in Dune, I agree.

[00:26:33] I think that they've struck it well in this show, because they brought in, for instance, two major actors, Olivia Williams and Shorag Dashaloo, as the queen and advisor of Camelon. And that seems fitting, because it's like, yes, they should be regal acting royalty. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not like, I didn't recognize them. I don't think they're the biggest stars in the entire world. It's not like they're having Tom Cruise be some ale.

[00:27:03] Yeah. Oh, God. That would be awful. I'm not a Tom Cruise fan in general, but he also would be terrible casting for that role. You know who would be great in the show, though, is Sam Rae. I think he'd make a great Forsaken. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I already said, yeah, I would love Pedro Pascal as Atal Rada. Oh, yeah. One of the great captains. Yeah. That'd be good. But anyway, yeah. So they are on the slopes of Chyandere. Chyandere? Or how did they say that?

[00:27:34] Anyway. I don't know. But I just came up with the greatest fan casting of all time that now we can have. Okay. Okay. What is it? Sam Rae as Lord Luke. Okay. Well, too late. But wouldn't that be great? Yeah. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't know, Sam Rae plays Lestat in the interview of Vampire. I just want to look at Sam Rae some more. Yeah. He awakens something in me. He's also one of the most phenomenal actors I have ever seen.

[00:28:02] So, yes, he would be fantastic. He would have been a great Lord Luke, but it's taken. Yep. Okay. Go on with your actual thoughts instead of my random fan casting, please. Okay. But, yeah, so they're on the slopes of Chyandere, which is indeed where they gather to go into Rydien. The one thing that gave me pause for a minute was when they first meet the Shido, they start veiling and going at each other. And I don't see that happening.

[00:28:29] But I think that's just a shortcut to be like, hey, remember the Shido and the Tardad, not friends. But they immediately, you know, the wise ones step forward and they're like, hey, hey, we don't do this here. And they all calm down. So, it was interesting. Savannah was conveniently not present when Moraine asked to go to Rydien. How do you think Savannah would have responded to that? Not great, probably. Yeah.

[00:28:54] At the same time, Moraine clearly learns that the wise ones can channel when, I think it's Bear. She stops Kool-Aid in from moving forward, right? Right. Oh, you think? I guess that's a good point. Yeah. I don't think she's seen them channel before. And then when they do that, they pant to Moraine, who's like, oh. Yeah. Oh, that's a good point. I didn't think about that. Yeah. For her, I guess I would be a surprise. Like, oh, there's channelers outside the White Tower? Right. How could it be? Yeah.

[00:29:23] The White Tower is just completely convinced that they know everything and that no one is a secret to them and they know everyone who's channels. Yes. And it turns out, of course, the wise ones know a lot more about the Aes Sedai than the Aes Sedai know about the wise ones. Yep. Exactly. I also thought it was a nice detail they did where, so we saw Avienda asked to go into Rodean and she does this thing where she like puts out her arms in this gesture of asking.

[00:29:50] And then Ran, he's like, okay, well now it's my turn to ask. And so he does the same gesture and Kool-Aid in his life. He presents himself like a woman. Right. And because he wasn't taught it, right? So he just copied the one he saw, which was only a woman. Right. Exactly. He never saw a man do it. We still don't know how a man's supposed to do it. But yeah, I thought that was a great thing too. And also it just shows why Kool-Aid is like building contempt for Ran. Dude is big mad, as the kids say. Yeah.

[00:30:19] I mean, he was born big mad, but none of this is going to help, especially once he finds out his brother didn't make it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was, by the way, my favorite, one of my favorite parts of it coming to life. I was like, it's so hard to depict somebody falling apart in slow motion. Mm-hmm. And they did it. They did it again. Yeah. I was like, oh, I buy this. Yeah. Just so suddenly his eyes are bleeding, which makes sense because it's like he can't face

[00:30:47] the visions that he's being shown. Yeah. You know what's interesting is just like, and I'm getting ahead of us a little bit, but just the fact that this is considered such a great trial because it fundamentally challenges your entire worldview. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And Rand didn't have the worldview to be challenged. Exactly. So it's honestly an easy challenge for him. Exactly. So much easier for him. Yeah. I didn't understand why he collapsed. I mean, it seems like it's just like there's a lot of weight of, it's just like physically

[00:31:17] and emotionally taxing to just walk through this. Yeah, yeah. Because you see him, it's like he's leaning into a heavy wind the entire time he's walking. That's fair. And also, like, I was kind of like, are you supposed to go to sleep so that they could do the tattoos? Oh, maybe. Like, it's almost like magical anesthesia. Yeah. Like, the body gives out so that they can generate this new thing. Yeah. Was it, you were saying, right, that you were wondering if they would use the Isle name for Lon? Lon? Yeah.

[00:31:47] And they have started to use it, Annaline? Yep. Which means man alone or man who is an entire nation? Why not both? Why not both? Which, yeah, it plays again into what we saw in episode three with Melindra being like, we want you to take up the banner and reclaim Malkir from the Blight. And it's like, okay, well, I don't know what you want me to do about that. But we'll put a pin in that.

[00:32:19] And yeah, and they also said, the Bear and Melaine said that they didn't see Egwene coming at all. So she's a total wild card in this. So it must have been a total surprise for Bear when suddenly Egwene pops up in her dream. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting, right? Is that she is just along for the ride.

[00:32:41] I think that's another part of why I go like, who needs to be, who needs to be, why can't I think right now? Tavirin. Who needs to be Tavirin is like, I've always seen Egwene as kind of like a rogue agent who just like is so smart that she's just climbing the ranks herself. Yeah. Well, the reason why Egwene's my favorite character is just that she is the one who wants to learn everything. Yeah. I think she's just incredibly smart. She's very powerful.

[00:33:11] And she uses what power she has, including her wits, to navigate every situation so expertly. Yeah. When she also, she's like, I'm going to learn about every culture so that I understand all the different nuances, which makes her a really interesting character because she's like sort of, she's been training with Aes Sedai, obviously. She got that unintentional Shan Chan training and now she's been promised to start some training with the wise ones.

[00:33:39] So she's really doing the whole student exchange program, which is kind of a theme from the books I enjoy. Yeah. And like I say, like she's, she's like, it's not enough that I'm going to get here. I want to go through the rings, right? Like she's always looking for that next step, which I think is a really interesting character trait. Yeah. And Bear says, if you ask to go, we will not allow it. You must learn what you are. You must learn what he is. Referring to Rand, of course, your paths do not align.

[00:34:09] So we'll see. Yeah. The, uh, the Rand Gwain shippers. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. They're not making it look good. Your paths do not align, but add a line. Mmm. But I'm ching. I'll be here all, all hour. So I'm, I was really excited. I saw, I have to say, I saw the, the episode description that we have in our press notes before I opened it and was like, Avienda must make an important decision.

[00:34:37] I'm like, Oh, this is where she's going to be forced to become a wise one. Um, so I expected that, but I want to hear, especially from people who haven't read the books, whether they were surprised to find out that Avienda was apparently called to be a wise one. Yeah. There's no way for us to figure that out. Right. Like, like you and I already knew that. Um, right. I was surprised in the book, honestly. I, I, I mean, partly because you don't know that the wise ones can channel.

[00:35:05] You don't know how Avienda, uh, maybe has some kind of talent. We don't know if she could channel or if she can dreamwalk or both. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's just, uh, it's an interesting twist. Yeah. And, and bear basically says the same thing, right? She's like, I was, I was a maiden too. Yeah. I, I chose, I had to, uh, handle this anyway. Yeah. She also didn't want to give up the spears. I have to say when she snapped the spears, I said, ouch out loud.

[00:35:37] Um, I was speaking of bear though. So you brought up, why is it not Amis? And yeah, because Amis is my favorite wise one in the books. A lot of people's, she's a very important wise one, arguably more important than bear and bear in the show is doing a lot of the stuff that Amis does in the book. So it's like, okay, they, they combine them, but why go with bear? So a rumor, and this is just like, take this with a grain of salt, but I find it a satisfying

[00:36:06] enough explanation for myself is that they were going to cast both. And then Amazon said, no, you can only have one and they can only cast bear. And for some reason they kept that, they could have just changed her name to Amis, but maybe they'd already done like the paperwork or something where they're like, okay, so we have bear, but we're going to give her Amis's story. Interesting. I have no idea why you would do that. It's just Amis is so much more well-known. I mean, bear is also well-known.

[00:36:35] Like she was one of the names that I would think of from, but yeah, anyway, it's, I'm calling her Ambear in my head. You could do better than that. Berris. I like Ambear. Keep workshopping it. But I love how they do the reveal of, of the fact that Avienda has been called and has to give up being a maiden of the spear. It's like, Avienda, you see her starting to pick one last fight.

[00:37:02] First she, you know, which again, they call the dance of the spears. And first she picks the fight with Rand and Rand just like immediately falls down. I was like, I don't know. I don't want to fight. But then Lan. I don't blame him. I don't want to fight the Aiel either. No, but Lan seems to understand what's going on. And you see Lan, like she goes after Lan for having a sword near Rydian and Lan's like, I'm not giving up my sword. And he gets the smile on his face and like, she does not put up her veil.

[00:37:31] So we know this is just a play fight for her, but it's like she, she wants a good sparring match. And you're just like, I don't know. Is she just feeling ornery? And then, you know, the wise ones step in and they're like, okay, stop. That's enough. And you realize that was her, her literal last dance. So sad. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that that was a nice way to do it. Like we got a, a fun fight sequence. Lan got to show a little personality and then she has to hand over her cotton sore, which

[00:38:01] is what they call the outfit that they wear to fight, which is a reference to what we see the ancient Daishen Aiel, the original Aiel uniforms wearing. But the wise ones don't wear that. They wear like skirts and stuff because they don't fight. Right. And she says, I'll be back before you reach the slopes of Chayander, which is not true. She comes back after they reach the slopes. But anyway,

[00:38:29] I thought we could run through a few key Aiel terms that are brought up this episode or concepts. So first we see Bayer, Bayer, we see Bayer offer, here's water and shade freely given. And we've heard like several times, like we heard when, oh shoot, what's the freaking names? Bayer and Chiad. See, Bayer and Bayer are too close. Yeah.

[00:38:57] We hear Bayer and Chiad say that like to, to Egwene's mom and the two rivers episode or two ago, they're like, thank you for the water and shade roof mistress, basically. So yeah, that's basically, they live in a desert. So water and shade, these are the things that are comforts, that are protection. Right. And something about Aiel culture is like a subtle change in language can mean like a big honor or a big disrespect. Mm-hmm.

[00:39:25] And there's like this whole thing, you know, they're saying like, here's water and shade freely given, but you could also say like, I guess you can stay under my roofed, you know? Like you can do like a more hesitant, like you may have my water and shade. Mm-hmm. And that is supposed to be like a big F you. Right. Or a big like, you come as a beggar kind of thing. Right. Right. Yeah. And Bayer, she goes even a step further and she says, all here are welcome as first sisters are welcome.

[00:39:54] So what does she mean by that? Well, we don't get the full reveal of what that means. No. Until later. So I don't want to go too deep. But essentially, Aiel have this concept of first sisters. And I don't know, can you do that with brothers? I only know that being done with sisters. Yeah, true. But first sisters, where you are essentially treated as sisters, even though you were not biologically related. Right.

[00:40:23] And sisters with a very loose term, like for instance, Bain and Shi'at, that's what you expect. Like they are first sisters and that's how you expect them to behave. I go where she goes. That sort of thing. Yeah. They are like ultra besties, bonded for life besties, I guess. And yeah, so we talked about the dance of the spears. And this is why, you know, we saw when Avienda was first introduced, she said the famous Gaul line from the book, do you want to dance, Paranaba Aybara?

[00:40:55] Do you want to dance? What did Bear tell us about the Gai Shen? It seems like they're setting that up as a concept that we should be paying attention to for later. Yeah, they said it a little bit more simply in the show than in the last year. The book, Gai Shine are, they act as servants, but don't call them servants. They are people who were touched in battle.

[00:41:20] And so that means like I could have killed you, but instead I give you a tag and you're it. And you are going to save your honor because you've been dishonored by that. Right. To save your honor, you will now be a Gai Shine for one year and one day. And then at the end of that year and a day, all is forgotten. Yeah. Yeah. So they, I mean, they didn't explain all of the concepts, but I think it's safe for us

[00:41:47] to say now that in the book, at least they, yeah, it's, you serve your captor for a year and a day. You, during that time, you're not allowed to touch any weapons or fight. You have to wear all white. And then once it's done, once that year and a day is over, your shame is wiped away and all is forgotten and you can just return to your life as if nothing, nothing happened. Although some decide to stay with their captors and get married. We're going to call it a whoopsie daisy.

[00:42:16] Well, I mean, you know, ultimate Stockholm syndrome. Yeah. Well, I just mean the, uh, the, the whole going back and nothing happened. It was just a whoopsie daisy. It was just a whoopsie daisy. Don't worry about it. I did my thing. I served my time and now I'm forgiven, which is something that maybe other societies could learn from. Yeah. And nobody, nobody bats an eye. Everyone's just like, yeah, cool. We did it. Yep. You did the thing. Welcome back. All right. Life resumes. Yeah.

[00:42:42] Um, the people who can't become guys, Sean or wise ones, blacksmiths and women with a child under the age of 10, uh, and those who are themselves under the age of 16. So this is an adults only thing. They don't take mothers away from children. Wise ones and are exempt because of course they're not even allowed to fight as our blacksmiths because they are important. Right. They're like, look, we have rules, but we're also reasonable. Mm hmm. Yeah. And, um, yeah, there's a lot of, you know, you were talking about the subtlety of the IEL language.

[00:43:11] I haven't really gotten into that yet, but there are different ways where I'm sure we're going to see characters trip up, shaming Geishem by saying the wrong things. Um, we, we saw, for instance, they, uh, Malayne was saying to Moraine, like, you don't have any, you, you don't have manners or something like that because Moraine kept asking direct questions. And like, that's not a thing you do with the IEL. You can't do that.

[00:43:37] You, you, you know, it's funny cause they're really direct about some things and then other things they're like, no, you cannot ask that. Yeah. We also saw, so we saw, um, okay, let's talk about Gito. What is Gito? Gito is, uh, what's, what's the second part? I literally just made, there is a, an entry in the show guide on this. Honor and obligation. Honor and obligation. Thank you. I can never remember the second part.

[00:44:04] Uh, it is essentially just the, the rule system for the IEL. We never get set rules for it in the books. I'm just going to be honest with you. Like it is supposed to be like inscrutable to a Westlander. Like they just cannot figure it out. Uh, but at the same time, the IEL are like very clear, like this is easy. A child would know this. Like they're very, they're really dismissive of people who don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we saw some parents struggling with it, uh, last season when, so we, when we first

[00:44:34] met Avianda, you know, Paran rescued her from the white cloaks and then they went back and met with bear, with Bane and Shi'ad and, um, Avianda like puts down all of her weapons and she's like, okay, let's go for it. And then Bane and Shi'ad just beat the crap out of Avianda. Uh, and then it's over. And then she's met her toe and we find out is because she let, she didn't properly protect by their definition, uh, one of their fellow maidens of the spear and then that woman died.

[00:45:03] So she was, she had toe because of that. And so they beat the toe out of it. Yeah. Out of her. Yeah. Um, there, there's a little much physical violence in Gia Toe for me. I think maybe we could, we could have some, some nicer punishment, but oh, well, that's what the A will do. A harsh people in a harsh land and they, yeah, beat each other into strength. They think, I guess. Right. Yeah.

[00:45:29] So basically G is like, you have G when you have done something that earns you a sort of honor and then toe when you have been dishonored more or less. Um, yeah. And, uh, the other thing we didn't talk about is, uh, rain is Rand is being a total poopoo head to Moraine this episode. Um, I think that's also, uh, Lanfear has been amping up his paranoia that Moraine's trying to control him.

[00:45:59] Right. This is totally from the books. Now, in fairness, the Aiel did try to imprison him like a season ago. Well, I mean, but he's the one who wants to do, oh, you mean the, the I said, I, Oh yes. I'm sorry. That's what I mean. I, I, I'm just, I'm just speaking. It's early in the morning for me and I'm, I'm just speaking wrong words. The Aes Sedai Swan is what I was trying to say. She did try to imprison him last season. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:28] I mean, I think he has every reason to distrust Moraine. Um, this is something that in the books, it goes on a bit long where, uh, where, um, all the distrust of Moraine and here again, like most things, there's not as much time. So it's like, we get it. He distrusts Moraine. And this is, we see in this episode, it's kind of a turning point of sorts. At the same time, I'm okay with that part going on a little long on the books because it, I think it makes certain things more meaningful later. Mm-hmm.

[00:46:56] And so I don't want to complain about that part. He, look, Robert Jordan is the king of like milking things a little bit too long, but I just think that one is one that I'm okay with. Yeah. Okay. All right. So speaking of Rand and Moraine, shall we go into Roydian? Let's do it. So we'll talk about what Rand sees separately in a moment. Should we take turns talking about, uh, what happens leading up to that? Sure. After you. Okay.

[00:47:24] So the wetlanders learn more from the Aiyil about Roydian in this abandoned city covered in a mystic fog. There are two key Terangryol objects of power that serve a specific purpose. There are the glass columns through which men who seek to be clan chiefs must walk.

[00:47:43] Inside these misty glass columns, each step taken draws a man, but further back along his own ancestry, reliving key moments in the life of an ancestor who may have lived dozens, hundreds, or at the end of the walk, even thousands of years before. But many, most even, do not make it through the columns. Women who wish to become wise ones face three rings. Stepping into any of them will show them flashes of many thousands of possible futures with equal potential for a lethal experience.

[00:48:13] Rand and Moraine must leave all their weapons behind to be retrieved if they survive. And they enter the misty city together, finding the large Avendasora tree in the center. Rand peels off to enter the glass columns, and the tree opens for Moraine with some help from her channeling, gifting her a glass orb, the powerful Sangriel, the Sakarnin. Meanwhile, Rand steps forward through the columns to step back through time.

[00:48:41] He sees the Shido would-be clan chief, Muladine, who struggles more than Rand, ultimately perishing from the visions as Rand presses on to the end. So yeah, men remember the past, women get glimpses of the future. Whatever Mulaine points out to lead is to know where you come from. But those who have been through this whole experience can only talk about it with other people who have gone through the same thing, which is an important plot point to keep in mind.

[00:49:11] It sure is. Yeah. What did you think of the design of Freudian? I thought very cool. City in the Clouds, something that is an iconic description of the book. And I'm like, are they going to be able to do this in the show? Is this going to look stupid? But it's something that could look very stupid. So they did a great job making it look amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't like, you know, Rand notes, oh, this doesn't look like an Isle City. But it was designed to look like the cities from before the breaking. Right. Right. Which makes sense.

[00:49:40] And that's super cool, right? It's like nobody even understands how much more advanced they were before the breaking. Right. Exactly. Yeah. In that they've changed some things with, basically, they've done a lot of simplifying. And I think this has, this means, you know, as you brought up, there's something called the Choden Kal. I've always said Koden Kal. I think that's what they say in the book, too. Okay. But, yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:10] Yeah. But then that basically, it's a concept from the book that involves two paired sangreal, one for male, one for female. And in the book, it's statues that hold glass balls that look a lot like the TV show Sakarnin we see Moraine with in this episode. So, I think we heard from Lanfear, and now we have confirmed here that they seem to have instead paired Kalindor, the sword that is not a sword.

[00:50:39] They seem to have paired that with the Sakarnin. So, it seems like these are the two paired sangreal instead of the Choden Kal. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Whatever. I'm fine with that. Yeah. I think they're underused in the books anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, yeah. So, in the books, there's like, on the male side, there are four major male sangreal that we see in the books.

[00:51:05] One is like the little fat man, which is basically what we saw Ranj use in the first season. Um, and then way stronger than that is Kalindor, the sword that is not a sword. The Sakarnin is actually for men in the book, and it's like a rod, a scepter with a goblet on top of it. Um, and that's stronger than Kalindor. And then the Choden Kal is the strongest of all. So, they changed the books Sakarnin from male to female and made it this globe.

[00:51:35] And, yeah, it seems like they're saying, yeah, it's going to pair with Kalindor so that men and women can work together. Here's from Origins of the Wheel of Time on Code and Call. Welsh Coden. So, there's no H in the Welsh Coden. So, I think it is Coden. He just adds an H to be annoying. Okay. Welsh Coden means tree in the singular form, and Hebrew, khal. It would be khal. Oh, yeah. The Welsh for, uh, with CH is khal. Yeah, but anyway.

[00:52:03] Uh, means, uh, and Hebrew khal means an assembly or congregation. Jordan's combination of them is therefore something of a paradox, an assembly of a single tree. In the Wheel of Time, however, this makes some sense. The Coden Kal are two enormous sangreal, each representing one branch of the one power. Okay. Okay. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And I like that they put it in Aventasora here, right? Mm-hmm. So, even though it's not the Coden Kal, it's sort of tied back to the meaning.

[00:52:33] Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy with this. I know that this is going to be one of those things where book readers are like, wait, but I like, but there's all the different things with, but I think, yeah, they don't have time to do all the story, different story elements that are tied to all these different sangreal. So, I understand why they're streamlining. I'm going to be honest. Just, just, if you're big mad about this, what do the Coden Kal do except big mad, big power?

[00:53:03] You know, like, I, I just, I don't think that there is a deeper lore reason to keep it in. I know my friend, uh, Brett was, he was worried about more about that, uh, Colin, Colin door. He didn't want like the special things about Colin door to be taken away, but I don't think that I agree with. Yeah. But I don't think they're going to do that. I think they just, you know, they just won't, they'll just add to it rather than take away. Basically. I agree.

[00:53:31] There's a way to do this in an additive way. Um, and, and as long, but I, I just don't think you need the Coden call for this. No, no, I agree. I agree. I agree. Um, and then, so the other thing is in the books in the middle of radio and there's like a whole square full of Tongriol. Um, in the TV, we just see the columns, the rings and the tree that's hiding the Sakarnin again, a simplification. I'm fine with it. Um, and we have to point out, of course, at this point in the books, Matt was with Rand

[00:53:59] and he was doing his own thing in Rodeon at this time, which I think they're going to represent in other ways in the show. Um, I think it made sense to have Rand and Moraine together because their, their relationship is key at this point in the story. I agree. I think, especially with the lack of time in the show, you really need to put them together a little more. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Uh, okay.

[00:54:26] So shall we talk through the big history? Um, should we just, we'll, should we take turns recapping what Rand saw inside and then take a quick break and then come back and talk through all of these different reveals? Yeah. I see, I see your page here of notes. Yeah. Which I don't blame you. Like it's, it's just a very long and complicated scene that you don't want to break up. Yeah, exactly. So yeah.

[00:54:52] So we're going to talk through, um, the glass in the glass columns ran learns the history of the aisle through the history of his own ancestors in reverse order. But we're going to recap events here in chronological order and add in the extra history that Moraine gave us, uh, that has to do with the whole aisle legacy. So you do want to start with Rand's final vision. Starting with Rand's final vision from the perspective of Rand's ancestor, more than 3000 years in the past.

[00:55:20] He is a farmer standing in the Sharom, a floating spear dedicated to scientific research, talking with the Aes Sedai he serves, a scientist named Mirren. Who will later become the forsaken known as Lanfear. She tells him that there are, they are about to make a breakthrough drilling through a thin spot in the pattern to tap into the true power, a source of the one power, the power they channel that has not been divided between the genders.

[00:55:48] A power Mirren says will be accessible to all, not just the Aes Sedai. Rand's ancestor opted to join his family in the fields below rather than stay with Mirren to open the boar. From his grounded vantage point, he sees a dark hole ripped into the Sharom, which falls to the ground. And the very fabric of the universe. It does not look like good news. Then, toward the end of the century of collapse that follows, we pick up with another ancestor

[00:56:17] of Rand's, one of the Daishan Aeel, the original Aeel, who served the Aes Sedai during the age of legends and were sworn to the Way of the Leaf, a pact of nonviolence. As darkness and flame envelop his world, he meets with Latra Posay, leader of the female Aes Sedai last seen arguing with Luz Theron about strategies to trap the dark one in the season one finale called Open. His people load up wagons loaded with treasures of the age of legends given to them for safekeeping,

[00:56:47] but they must swear in a covenant to the Aes Sedai that they will maintain their pact of peace. Rand's ancestor took the sapling from the Chora tree of life, the Avin de Sora sapling, and a powerful saangreal for women called the saqarnin. Like many, the dangers of the breaking kept the Daishan Aeel on the move, always looking for a place they could settle and keep themselves and their Aes Sedai treasures safe.

[00:57:16] It was foretold that the desert known as the Waste was the best place for them to settle, to build a city for the objects they carried. But, after a large massacre around the time of Rand's ancestor, Jone, around the time that the Aes Sedai killed the last male channeler, ending the breaking, a large group of the original Aeel did not want to leave the wetlands, but wanted to enjoy the new peace promised there. Abandoning the Aes Sedai objects in their care and no longer allowed to call themselves

[00:57:44] Aeel, they set off in search of the old songs, and they wander through the wetlands, seeking the song still, except when they cross the Waste, where the Aeel are not supposed to harm them. Though most Aeel no longer remember why. Among those left, in another generation, one of Rand's ancestors, Luin, and his two friends broke the Way of the Leaf when they killed bad men while rescuing their kidnapped sisters. They are shunned from their people and told to cover their faces with a veil.

[00:58:14] They decide to stick around the Waste and protect their kin for as long as they live, but they will not use a sword. They will use a spear, a practical weapon used for hunting as well. The Aeel who continued onto the Waste to fill the covenant were known as the Gen Aeel, the true Aeel. They built the city of Roideon and planted the tree in which they hid the Sakarnan Sangreal. There's so many proper nouns here. Yeah, lots of lore.

[00:58:41] And then eventually they die out, leaving only the Aeel as we know them today. And the Aes Sedai Latra Posay, now ancient, shrouds the city and its mysterious mist, uses the Sakarnan to form the glass columns, and calls the remaining Aeel, including Rand's ancestor Mendain, there to set new terms. They will send their clan chiefs and wise ones to Roideon to do these trials so that they

[00:59:08] never forget the odes they broke, and always look ahead. Those who did not agree to these terms knew, thanks to the wise ones' dreams, that their names and legacies would be lost to time. During the breaking, people were fearful and unkind to each other, especially to the Daishen Aeel, who refused to defend themselves. So the Aeel felt deep appreciation for the one tribe that took them in and sheltered them for a time.

[00:59:34] Many years later, when the Aeel had settled in the Waste, they learned this tribe had grown into the flourishing city and nation of Karyan. To show their appreciation, they bestowed two gifts on the Karyanen. A sapling from the Avendisora tree, and the right to pass through the Waste, allowing Karyanen to trade with the continent of Shara, giving them a silk monopoly in the Westlands.

[00:59:59] That is, until Moraine's uncle breaks the peace triggering the Aeel war and the series of events that would lead to Rand's birth on Dragon Mount. Rand's first vision in the glass columns, the latest in the timeline, is of his own biological father, Janduin, screaming in anguish at finding his lover dead and their baby gone. Wah, wah, wah. All right. Shall we take a break here, let people absorb that whole history, and then come back and analyze it? Bring tissues when you come back.

[01:00:49] So first of all, just compliments to Josia Stradowski, who plays Rand and all of his ancestors. And I mean, I knew he could act, but I just, this really impressed me, his work here. Uh, and also compliments to the hair and makeup team, which is led by Davina Lamont. Yeah. I'm, I'm certainly not Randall bored by this episode. Oh, I see what you did there.

[01:01:13] Um, did you like how they gave the version of, of his ancestor who broke the pact of nonviolence? Um, he had two friends that were definitely, I think, intended to remind us of Perrin and Matt. Yeah. In my head, I was like, should they have just had Matt and Perrin play? Yeah. I was thinking about that. Um, but I guess maybe that would have been too on the nose. I think so. Yeah. I, as I'm going through, I'm like, no, that's a dumb idea. And that's why I don't make the show.

[01:01:41] But they definitely were, were, um, hearkening back to that. And I liked how they gave us a moment where we see like a stoned, you know, proto Rand hugging a baby tree in a wagon. Like that was perfect. A moment of respite. Respite. Yeah. Honestly, they felt very Merry and Pippin at the beginning of this vision. Hmm. And I enjoyed that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or I already said looked cool as hell.

[01:02:08] Um, I loved, it was interesting by the way that the two ancestors of Rand that we saw in like the age of legends times where they're speaking the old tongue, those are the only two they didn't name. Oh, I didn't even notice that. They were also the ones that like look the most Randy, right? That's true. They look the most like him. Yeah. Um, but I liked that his ancestor said it feels good to do stuff by hand. Cause, uh, you know, Mirren, AKA Lanfear later, she's like, no, cause she, at this point,

[01:02:38] like, I think it's important to emphasize at this point, she was not Lanfear. She was not yet forsaken. And she was, she, she was an imperfect person. And I'm sure we'll learn more. We've already learned some stuff about her obsession with Luz Theron, who she mentions here. Um, and by the way, we should also say Luz Theron is Rand's former life, but it is not his ancestor. So we need to make the distinction there. Right. Right.

[01:03:05] His soul is Luz Theron, his bio, his biological ancestry is the Aeol. Right. And the fact, I think that it's the soul of the dragon coming into this body that is, um, a descendant of this entire Aeol history is one of the reasons why he is the Karakart. This coming together of these things. Right. Right. Yeah. Makes sense. By like, I like, you know, so at this point, Mirren, she's like, oh, we're going to help

[01:03:34] make all your work easier. And he's like, well, you know, like some of the work, it's just nice to actually physically do stuff in the fields and touch things and, you know, live. It's really interesting. I mean, the, since industrialization, we've had this like debate over like how much automation should we really have? And so I'm not super surprised that this still rings true today, but it really rings true today in the age of AI. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

[01:04:03] And, um, we, we got the song. That is not something that's answered in the books. Like we know the two of them are always looking for a song. Um, but we actually, they actually gave us the literal song in this episode. I didn't even put that together that that was the song. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you saw. So Mark from Nevermind the Music, he is definitely, he's keen to talk about Wheel of Time. He's a fan. And so we were talking about like, he's like, well, if there's a musical thing, for instance, give me a heads up. And I was like, there's some singing in a field.

[01:04:31] I can't tell you why I want to talk about it, but just pay attention to that in this episode. Well, I'm sure he'll, he'll see that on Thursday and be Leo pointing at the screen. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, yeah, so we'll, we'll, yeah, I think we're going to have, um, Mark on for, to talk about the feedback, our feedback episode after. I think that'll be good. We gotta, we've, we've had to record these in advance just to get these out on time.

[01:04:58] And, um, you know, to, because we got Andor coming, so we got to get a little bit ahead, but, uh, good to always have more voices in. Yes. Yeah. So we can, we can ask, pick his brain on whether this is a song to search centuries for or not. I liked it. I liked it. I liked the whole thing. And there, Hey, what did you think of their hats? They were fine. I didn't. I thought they were great. I thought those were, I mean, cause also the looks like, um, like there was a definite,

[01:05:27] it was like a melding of maybe something Mediterranean with something maybe like Chinese in terms of field worker hats, but looked completely different. I thought it was perfect. Those hats. Marine's hats. I have no feelings about either way. Give me anything but Marine's hat. I mean, whatever. Yeah. She takes it off. Um, She's about to go have dinner with Ina Garner. That's what I feel when I see Marine's hat. Yeah.

[01:05:57] I mean, she looks like she's like on vacation. Like she would be at the white Lotus. Oh, did you watch last night's episode? Not yet. Not yet. We're recording this right after white Lotus. Uh, there is a celebrity cameo. Okay. That's going to blow your mind. Oh, interesting. And it's not K. Hu Kui. No. Kong. Oh, wait, sorry. I'm saying his name wrong. K. Hui. Anyway. Um, he understands in spirit. Don't worry.

[01:06:25] Uh, yeah, no, I haven't watched it. I heard it's a big one though. I, I've been seeing like nudges online. Watch it. Watch it. But I was busy prepping this. I, I've already blue sky about it with, with a spoiler, uh, hashtag. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I I'm avoiding blue sky for that, but I'll watch it after this. Um, so, okay. So we see the Sharom, this floating sphere thing, which was indeed from, from the books in the age of legends.

[01:06:49] This is where they were, uh, doing particularly this study into, you know, Miriam's, uh, AKA land fears project about like trying to study how to drill through the pattern and to get to this true source. Um, and it is hovering over column Don university, uh, which is in the city of the same. So I didn't notice the second time I watched, I paid more attention in the background and

[01:07:17] there is a city in the background, but I think that was a clever thing to do. You know, I was, I was talking with my friend about this and he was like, I would love to see more of the age of legends and like Joe cars zooming around, which we caught a glimpse of that in, um, the cold open for the season one finale. When we saw Latra and, and, uh, lose talking. But I think here they made smart decisions with the budget so that it looked really expensive,

[01:07:46] but they're like, no, we're going to spend this money on, on the Sharom and the boar. I get it. I get it. And the death star needs to be there. Yeah. And it also, yeah, just this, this connection with the land emphasis. And I think that it just made a lot of really smart decisions in this episode. I think so too. I mean, they, they absolutely nailed this rant sequence and, and honestly, like the whole episode of the, you know, take the hat away and it's a perfect episode.

[01:08:16] Damn hat. Um, but the people with the, with the cool hats, they, so the song, this seems to be the song that the two off them were looking for because, you know, later on, uh, we hear one of the people who break off to become the two off them. She says, she says to Jonah or Jonah or whatever. Um, we need to, we're going to find some place where we can sing the song of the harvest again. You remember the song.

[01:08:44] So this seems to be the song of the harvest they were singing. And in the books, there's something called the song of growing, which was saying during the seed singing during the age of legends. And basically the idea was to help the plants grow fast and healthy. And we saw loyal sing a version of that last season because the old gear were involved in that as well. Um, I don't think the aisle can compete with the old gear on tree singing though. No, no. But I think, yeah, they, it was something that they did together because they used to

[01:09:12] work together, the humans and the old gear and there's other creatures in the books like the name, but, um, yeah. So I, it's Brian, uh, Brandon Sanderson, who wrote to the last few books after Robin Jordan passed away for anyone who doesn't know. Uh, and he was, I don't know if he is this season, but he was previously a consultant. Um, but then he said a lot of stuff about the show that wasn't true. Like he said that Moraine was stilled when she was shielded, uh, things like that.

[01:09:39] So, uh, he said that the song of growing is not the song that the two I found are looking for in the books, but you know, he says a lot of shit. So, uh, apparently in the show it is so there. That's interesting. I didn't know he said that he, uh, Hmm. I, I like Brandon Sanderson a lot. I, I, uh, I know you like his books. Oh, you, oh, you aren't. I thought you were.

[01:10:04] I've read a bunch of them because people tell me to, and then I, and then I'm like, it's fine. It's fine. I, you know what it is. I much prefer the gardening style of writing like Jordan and Tolkien and Martin. Uh, and I can see the outline through the writing when I read Brandon Sanderson and I don't care for that as much. I always wanted to read the books, but, um, and, and there's still like on my list to get

[01:10:31] to eventually, but he intimidates me at the, with the pace he puts them out. Well, the, the nice thing is he does do them in like sub series. Like, honestly, like you can completely read the Mistborn series and not read anything. Right. This is what I keep hearing that, but I, you know, I'm a completionist. Yeah. If you look the Cosmere connections are very subtle in the books I've read. I haven't read the stormlight archive, which is his like flagship. Like I'm going to write a thousand pages thing.

[01:10:59] Um, mostly because I'm just like, I have enough thousand page books to get through. I don't want to do this yet. Yeah. Um, but, but, um, I, I will say he does do a good job of like not requiring side reading to enjoy his book. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, and I have to say, I am, I'm happy with what he did with the last books in the main wheel of time series, because there is, you know, we get, there's this part in the

[01:11:24] late middle that everybody calls a slog, which is particularly the 10th book is most, for me, that's the only real slog, but, um, and so he kind of comes in after that. And I mean, Robert Jordan had started to pick it back up, but then it's like a breath of fresh air to finish off the series. Aside from there are some quibbles. I actually, the things that people quibble about are have to do with my two favorite characters in the entire series, Matt and Egwene.

[01:11:51] So, um, but I still over, despite that, you know, I'm quite happy with the way he ended the series. I'm so grateful that he was able to come in and end the series. So no, no hate for Brandon Sanderson. And his letter at the beginning of like how he loved the wheel of time and it inspired him. And he's just so sad. Robert Jordan's gone. We'll never get the, what the intended ending, but you know, this is the next best thing. Let's do it together. I love that letter. That's a great letter. Yeah. And it's a very, it's a satisfying ending, which obviously is based heavily on his books,

[01:12:21] but in some cases he changed some things. Some, uh, um, I'm, I'm fine with the change that you're referring to. So I know, I know we've discussed it many times. It has to do with Egwene. That's all I'll say for, if you know, you know, um, okay. So I, about the Tuathon, I just want to point out by the way that they don't have the spears even for hunting because they're vegetarians. So, so that's funny.

[01:12:50] Yeah, you're right. They've completely abandoned it. Yeah. So Latra Posay that she, we, she was referred to as the Tamerlan seat, which I guess is the, um, is the title that they're using for, you know, the Amarlin during the age of legends. Well, that's interesting because in the books, it's not a title. That was just a person Tamerlan. Right. Right. And there was, there was like the Tamerlan ring. Right. So this is a TV choice, but it makes sense.

[01:13:19] Tamerlan then later becomes Amarlin. Sure. Sure. Right. But Tamerlan was the first person to learn to channel the one power in the books. Mm-hmm. Um, which, and it would make sense then that they would call the leader of these people, uh, after her. You know, I do have, uh, under Amarlin's seat in the origins of the wheel of time that there is, and I don't know where he's getting this from, but apparently Tamerlan was taken as a title at some point. Okay. Okay.

[01:13:48] So, so they're not making this up in the show. No. Um, and so we, we last saw her as, as we were saying in the recap, uh, in the season one finale, cold open in the younger form. Um, and so that's when they were talking about this whole plan that he had to seal the dark one, which ultimately both worked because they did kind of seal away the dark one, but also they got the backlash backlash that tainted the male half of the power and caused all the

[01:14:18] male channelers to go mad and ruin the world. It wasn't great. Let's just say that. It wasn't great. So, yeah. So we have like, they're representing the two schools of thoughts. So we have, uh, Latra. She is the one who's like, let's just, my plan is like, let's, let's just contain the dark one for now. And so we can buy some time and find a safer way to seal him and lose there. And it's like, we can't wait. We have to strike immediately. Damn the risks.

[01:14:48] And, um, they basically pulled all of the women ended up following Matra and all of the men ended up following, um, lose. And that became the split that still basically exists to this day. Right. And, uh, you can see the argument for both, right? Like, you know, it's the literal devil. What are you going to do? Right. Um, yeah, it's, it's tricky.

[01:15:15] Um, I also want to point out that, so they gave Latra a role that's played by another character in the books where, where the role where she's like, okay, do you, you have to swear you're going to protect these, uh, this tree and these objects. It's multiple objects in the book. It's this one song grill in the show. Um, and keep moving until you find a place of safety where no one can harm you. Keep your people see safe. Keep these, uh, things safe until the Aes Sedai need them again.

[01:15:44] And, um, the person who made them swear this covenant in the books is called Solinda. And here it's makes sense to have Latra do it because it's like, we don't want to keep learning new people. We'll follow Latra. But they did name the character who came up and was like, don't give it to them. They can't even fight to protect it. They named that character Solinda. I noticed. So that's just a little nod to the book. So anyone who has any doubts that they know their shit through and through.

[01:16:12] Yeah, I, I definitely have no doubts that they know the books well and they have is, uh, Sarah Nakamura is, is, is she was the book consultant for a while? Is she still doing that? Yes. Yes, definitely. Mm-hmm. So yeah, Sarah, you're, you're always welcome. Yeah. Well, we should reach out to her actually. So, and so just to run through quickly, we had this like group who swore to protect the trees and blah, blah, blah, that they were, they were the original Aiel.

[01:16:41] We're calling them the Dishine Aiel, uh, because that's what they call them in the books. I don't know that they use that word in the show. I didn't hear them use that word, but just to clarify. Original Aiel, Dishine Aiel, they follow the way of the leaf. Eventually they split because some don't want to go to the waste and they become the Tuathon. They have to give up the Aiel name. And then the ones that go onto the waste are the Jen Aiel, which means true Aiel. And then there's a second split when, uh, some commit violence.

[01:17:11] And so they are no longer the Jen Aiel, but they are just the Aiel. They protect the Jen Aiel until the Jen Aiel die out, leaving only the Tuathon and the violent Aiel who don't remember that they share a history. Do you have anything you would add to or correct there? It's just so sad. Yeah. Saddest story, but yeah, I don't have a great recap. And do you want to talk about the Chora trees? Yeah.

[01:17:41] The Chora trees are, or the core tree. I don't remember how they said it. Oh yeah. Sorry. They're, they're so weird about the CH, like, uh, Robert Jordan, like inconsistent. You are very inconsistent on your language and not even just like it has a different root, but like, I feel like you just made up words sometimes. Well, yeah. Which is fine. It's fine. He's no talking in his, in his linguistics. Um, they're, they're, you know, they are of Endosora. They're the tree of life.

[01:18:08] You, you feel this and you see Rand feel it to this like safety under it that, uh, it's, and you know, arguably it made people become complacent because they were always like safe and happy if they were under these trees and they were everywhere in the age of legends. Yeah. It reminds me, I just had a thought and I doubt that there's much crossover here, but anyone who saw beacon 23, there's, uh, the Gwib, the gravity wave, um, beacon.

[01:18:35] They, when they, they hang out near that and it kind of makes them high in a similar way. Yeah. It's interesting. Like, would you just sit there forever and just chill out? Yeah. Oh, wouldn't that be nice with a book? Um, but yeah, so they, their branches are described as being naturally symmetric with no missing branches or gaping holes. And they have, uh, one thing that comes up a lot is the, they have large green tree foil

[01:19:04] leaves and these tree foil leaves. Like for instance, we saw when they came out of the gateway in the two rivers in episode two and loyal had this little stone leaf that he used to like lock the gateway and then took it back. Um, those were tree foil leaves. The shape. So they're the shape of the leaves of this tree. You have quite the, uh, yeah, you have quite the knowledge, honestly, beyond I do on that one. Cause I don't, I don't remember that at all from the books.

[01:19:33] Well, yeah. So it's, I mean, it's all tying back to this, to the age of legends when the Ogier and humans did things together. Right. Right. Just the, the variations on leaves is what I mean. I'm like, I don't know if I don't know the variations on the leaves of the cora tree. Well, I mean, all the cora tree leaves are the same. They're all these tree foil leaves. That's what I mean. Okay. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. I thought you were making a distinction here. Yeah. And, uh, I don't even know what I'm thinking anymore.

[01:20:01] But so the, it is sad though, that the cora trees, uh, Latra said they sent out 10,000 of them or, you know, Rand's ancestor said that. And it seems we only see one survive. They do in the book say that another one survived on the West coast for a while, but, uh, but let's just say one or two survived out of 10,000 because the breaking was rough y'all. It sure was. Don't, don't break the world. It's a bad. Don't break the world. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:20:28] Um, but yeah, the whole, why, how would you explain to people who haven't read the books? Why the truth about the, IE, the two a thon and the aisle so shocking that it would make more Dean's eyes bleed out. I mean, anytime you learn something that like directly contradicts your worldview, it's difficult. If you have to actually experience that and you know, it's true when you have the visceral

[01:20:54] reaction and you learn that everything you were proud about was a failure on your part. I mean, I think anyone would be challenged by that. And, and for these people going through this emotional visceral experience, a lot of them just, you know, call their eyes out and don't make it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we saw, you know, how Avienda had such contempt for the two a thon, even when she saw them killed, she was like, oh, you don't kill those stupid, pathetic little things, you know?

[01:21:24] Right. And they were actually the ones doing the right thing. Right. Although I have to say the two a thon also, they broke the vows first because they broke the vow to protect the ice at ice stuff first and there went off and did their own thing. That's true. They're failures in their own way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Avienda doesn't have contempt for the right reasons. Right. But yeah, I also have to, we didn't call this out in the recap, but Renz, when he comes

[01:21:52] out of the columns, he finds Avienda also collapsed and he wakes her up. She's just come out of the rings, obviously. And she sees the dragon tattoos on his arms and she's like, you can tell she's a little spooked, maybe having something to do with her visions. But also she just, she sees like, she was so sure this must be the Karakar and now it's confirmed. Yeah. Uh, but while she was so convinced, but also not convinced, right?

[01:22:21] You haven't earned that title yet. Right. Right. Yeah. Like she said to Moraine, like he will break her people, like her people, a lot, most of them will die. Right. Or, or at least not be Aiel anymore. Yeah. Some part of her must've maybe hoped it wasn't him. Right. You got some more time if, if it's not him. Yeah. And he says to her, I'm sorry. What do you think he's apologizing for? Oh, I don't know. Maybe waking her up from the best nap ever.

[01:22:51] Or, or, you know, actually what I think it is though, is like, he kind of was like dismissive of the Aiel way for a while. Yeah. And he was like, oh shit, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. And she was like, oh, you understand now. And he's like, well, I understand. I don't understand. Basically. Very Descartes of him. Hmm. Hmm. Um, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Overall, quite some cool fights and action.

[01:23:17] This, uh, episode, like that Luine who broke the way of the leaf at Ren's ancestor totally took that dude's face off with the spear. Yeah. It's a lot of violence, a lot of violence. Uh, I'm okay with that. But I, I do think they overdo it in the show a little bit sometimes, but sometimes I'm like, you know what? Go for it. Yeah. I mean, I understand some people find it off putting, uh, since I don't, I'm like, well, they did it in a really cool way. Like I did not expect that.

[01:23:47] Um, well, now that we know Marilyn's not going to watch the show anymore, she's just going to listen to our recaps. Now I don't have to give her any more warnings. No, I mean, I have to say, I do think they've upped, amped up the violence a bit this season. I mean, we had some extreme violent things that happened in prior seasons, but now it's more consistent. Right. Definitely. And that tracks with the books, right? It's like things get darker as the books go on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:24:12] And we also hear, uh, over and over repeated by the, what become the genio. They, so like we see Louie, uh, they lose a friend, but they save the two sisters. Uh, and they're the ones who are sent away and over and over, they're all saying, we bury our dead and we go on. What else is there? Which is kind of like the most depressing life you have ever heard. Yeah. It's I, I wouldn't want to live like that. It's a keep calm and carry on with a dark twist. Right. That's a good way to put it.

[01:24:44] Hmm. And yeah, just the, the heart, other heartbreaking thing is Rand's biological father, Jen, Jen Dween, how do you pronounce his name? Jen Dween. Anyway, he was still alive after Rand's mother died. Uh, so we don't know yet on the show what happened to him after that moment. But of course, Tam just saw this baby in the snow and was like, well, I'm going to save this baby and take it home.

[01:25:13] And he didn't realize he was taking the baby away from his biological father. And well, you also don't know how long after the birth they came along. Like baby could have died in the cold by then. It's true. I mean, Tam really did do the best thing for the wellbeing of the baby because she was absolutely blameless in this situation. No, he did nothing wrong. Absolutely. Um, he's not even the one who killed, uh, I don't know what I should call her at this point, but Rand's mommy. Rand's mommy. He's not even the one who killed her.

[01:25:43] Yeah. And he's like, you know what? Carrie Althor and I are, we're, we're, we're newlyweds. We'd like some children. Let's do it. Right. I don't know if they'll do this backstory, but in the book, she had lost some children. Um, but we also get this, this little mention here that I should point out that, uh, Janduin's IO crew, they mentioned that they were looking, he killed Laman, you know, Moraine's uncle who cut, you know, started the whole war with the tree. Um, but they were looking for his sword.

[01:26:14] Oh. Hmm. Just pointing that out for later. Did he kill Laman in the book? I don't remember. I don't think so. I think we didn't know who killed Laman in the book. If anyone, it was definitely him, but he was the clan chief of the Tardat. I think that's fine to say. Yeah. I don't have a problem with it. I'm just, I'm thinking, I think it is a show change. Yeah. No, I'm just saying in terms of spoilers, I don't think that's a spoiler to say. Um, but yeah, so this whole timeline that we've been talking through, we are going to,

[01:26:44] this week's lore cast is going to be about the overall timeline of, of this world, the ages. And then we're going to kind of, we'll reference the events here in timeline order with like how they match up with the other wars and things like that we've been referring to. So just give it a little more context. All right. Shall we go through the last section? Through the three rings. Through the tree rings. Let's do it.

[01:27:12] Moraine approaches the three rings where she sees Avienda already floating inside one of them. Stepping in, she is similarly swept up and begins to see visions of thousands of possible futures. Happy with Swan as Amarlin, a future where she bonds Rand as a warder, where she kills Rand, where she submits herself as a servant of Rand, where she sleeps with Rand, where Lanfear turns Elaine and the two rivers team to the shadow.

[01:27:40] Where Lanfear kills her over and over, where they have sex and thousands more. We don't see. Rand makes it out of the glass columns before Moraine makes it out of the rings, cutting back to Lan and Egwene. We find out it has been seven days and Avienda has already returned two days ago. The episode ends with Rand carrying a collapsed Moraine out of Rydian, passing her to Lan, and Egwene hugs him tightly as he stands there numbly.

[01:28:05] Both of his arms wrapped in magical dragon tattoos, golden dragon tattoos, marking him not only as a clan chief, but as the Karakarn chief of chiefs. So, by the way, Dune reference alerts, Karakarn, very similar to the Padasha Emperor, which is literally the Shah of Shas. But we don't call out enough. Oh, Robert, you really read that Dune book, didn't you? He sure liked Dune, but you know what? So do I, so I'm okay with it.

[01:28:37] We also, we don't call out enough that people keep calling Rand he who comes with the Dawn, so just saying that too. Uh, yeah. As you said, closest, we're gonna, we're getting to the flicker flicker, and I think that was that rotating camera effect. How cool was that? Very cool. Very cool. Um, and, and like, man, the, the rings just floating in the rings, such a cool. Yeah. In fact, I, I thought, I, I would have never thought of that, but I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:29:06] No, really like the way they were swept up and, you know, just really visually quite a cool thing. Um, and you, I, yeah, they say the wise ones say to Maureen as she goes in and through this, you will know some things that must be for you and some things that must not. So, I think that's interesting to keep in mind, especially if we find out later also what Avienda might have seen during her little trip. Yeah.

[01:29:36] Yeah. I, uh, I'm looking forward to finding out that if we do find it out. Maybe she'll keep it to herself forever. Maybe. Maybe if we get more seasons, we should definitely find things out. Uh, but yeah, I also want to point out that where the scene where we see Lanfear killing Maureen the most over and over and over Maureen is wearing the blue dress that we see her wearing in the poster for the season. So that's telling me this is a scene we're going to see play out in some form later this season.

[01:30:06] She is just, I mean, over and over and over again. I was like, damn, how many times do I need to see this? But it was a great effect, right? Because you're like, oh, Maureen understands that like 99 times out of 100, she dies to Lanfear. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Meanwhile, an episode ago, she's like, we can trust her. Well, I don't think she said we can trust her. I think she said like, what else? We want the same thing. What else are we going to do?

[01:30:35] Um, but I like the, the fact that they're leaning into the moral grayness of, of Maureen where Maureen, she definitely has the right motivation. She wants to save the world. And she's like, if I've got to work with the forsaken for a little while to in the, to save the worlds, then I think she knows that Lanfear is not 100% invested. In the shadow Lanfear is more invested in her own interests, which are Rand. Right, exactly.

[01:31:03] He's, you know, she's weighing the shadow and Luz Theron on, uh, on two hands and the, uh, the Luz Theron hand is on the floor. Yeah. She's like, just like when he says, rogue. Uh, Samael, can't wait to see more of him. Um, but yeah, uh, we're definitely going to learn more about what they see.

[01:31:28] Uh, but it is, it will be funny also to see how their visions change their behavior, especially Avienda. See if we can parse what she might've seen based on how she behaves after this. Spoilers. I'm going to become River Song soon because. Okay. Okay. All right. Say anything. Any, any final thoughts, um, in the spoiler free zone for this episode? I, I mean, amazing, amazing episode.

[01:31:56] If you're not watching the show, I don't know why you're listening to this podcast, but I guess tell all your friends to watch the show. Yeah. Yeah. We need that. Tell everyone, you know, that, uh, every, everyone, you know, who loves fantasy. This is the she's knit. How do you spell that in Jordan? In Jordanian. Well, it starts with a CH because everything does. You know? Uh, so do you want to tell people about the season pass?

[01:32:26] The season pass is a very good value. I have to say 10 bucks. You get a bonus episode every week called a lore cast where we go deeper into one or more topics. Uh, this week we're doing the timeline. As Alicia said, uh, you've get, you're getting ad free episodes of this season and last season's coverage. You're also getting, uh, the show guide, which is a visual guide. Big thank you to Nancy. Who is a. Absolutely. Our. We, we named her keeper of the chronicles for this, right?

[01:32:55] Right. Exactly. She's our keeper of the chronicles. And she has been, uh, doing the, uh, doing the creators work on this show guide. You know, uploading images and writing character descriptions. Uh, it's got a, you can sort by Aja. You can sort by faction on the character view. You can go to the episode guide and, and the characters will be tagged. So you can always like hover over them. You'll get a description of the character. Uh, if you click on it, it's great, great stuff.

[01:33:24] And there's a concept guide too, that I've, I've been adding to as we go. And, um, if, if you are a subscriber on supercaster, Patreon, then you are already getting all of this stuff. So you don't need to do the extra season pass season passes just for people who don't want all the other things. Like for example, uh, this month's 11 Z's that we had our first tie on Scott Pilgrim and Zoolander. Davey Mack cracked me up with his response of, we have to settle this with a walk off.

[01:33:55] Well, as long as we can all do left turns. Yeah. We did the season pass, not, not because we were trying to like get more money out of people, but because we, we see people like come in and out for a season and we're like, why don't we just make this easy for you? If you're only interested in one show, you can sign up for that. But if you want all our content and including our entire backlog of ad free and bonus episodes, then, you know, do this recurring subscription for five bucks at minimum. Then you get to find out how we handle our first tie with Scott Pilgrim and Zoolander.

[01:34:22] And also you get all the extra severance episodes. So yeah, severance season finale is coming out the day after this drops. I know I am. I'm stressed. Well, it'll be, I mean, you're stressed about what's going to happen in the show or stressed about the, all the prep. All of it. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[01:34:46] Well, I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing how the season ends, uh, hearing your coverage of it and also then, uh, having more focus on wheel of time. Yes, definitely. Because I, I need to get out of Lumen and into Ranlan a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I, you know, that Ranlan is my favorite place to hang out mentally. So. I, I mean, I'm with you. Yeah. I listened to the audio books to fall asleep pretty often.

[01:35:14] Cause I'm just like, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm like, all right, I'm with my friends. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that's a thing. Oh, I just like the characters. Like, although I love the severance characters anyway. Anyway. Um, I mean, that's such an important point though. Right. It's like, this is a story about characters and that's why I think this season is the strongest so far is that they're doing the character work that they didn't do as much earlier. Right.

[01:35:36] Well, and of course there's now they're able to, because they've built, like we can do this stuff with Avienda now because she was introduced in some of the IO concepts were introduced last season. So yeah, it's, you know, we, we have a podcast coming out this week on, I probably came out by the time this drops. It did, uh, on empire strikes back. We're doing our, our star Wars rewatch. And, um, I, I just think about how, how David and I were talking about the George Lucas took less money up front to get complete creative control of that movie.

[01:36:32] Mm-hmm. You didn't need the weep for Minethurin song, but it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. You are wrong. Sometimes you can be wrong about things. Listen, we can always, always agree to disagree. We can split. You can be the geniil if you want. The, the, uh, the books have so many songs and I loved both the songs in the first season and I'm excited. Well, now we got, uh, we got the song from the Tuatha.

[01:36:59] Um, but also apparently we're going to get some more singing later this season. We'll bring in Mark to moderate our debate over the music. Okay. All right. Fair. Um, all right. Well, if you enjoyed this episode, please do share it, share the wheel of time, make more people watch the wheel of time and then listen to us. Talk about it. Um, uh, you can leave a review talking about how you like the wheel of time. You can call us leftist buffoons.

[01:37:27] Um, wear that badge. What else is going on? It's so funny. I, I, every time this person, like if you're listening, I just want you to know that I chuckle every time I see leftist buffoon in our reviews. It's a great use of words. Uh, I think milkshake from severance would appreciate that word choice. Probably. Probably. So what else do we have going on in the network? Oh, plenty of stuff. Like I said, we're doing the star Wars stuff.

[01:37:56] I've got another Silmarillion story coming out at the end of this month with a Silmarillion. And we covered Baron and Luthien. So we're, we're in the big leagues now. We're doing the big stories from the Silmarillion. Uh, there are going to be three podcasts on Baron and Luthien. Two with Silmarillion. And then a third one because Anthony was very sad when I told him Baron and Luthien was already taken. So I said, we can do a bonus episode on the book.

[01:38:21] I mean, if any story in the Silmarillion is, uh, worthy of that, it's definitely that one. Right. And, and like you mentioned before, we got severance going on. Um, and or is coming. I, we got so much stuff coming out. I don't even know how to keep track of it. Oh, and we did a lore hounds play on Indiana Jones too. So check that out. Yeah. And, and Marvel stuff going strong. Uh, John and I def, uh, I finally got out to our, your friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man season one recap. And, you know, spoiler alert.

[01:38:48] One thing I say at the, in my hot takes on it is I don't have any complaints about that show. I think they just nailed it. So, uh, that was, yeah, that was a good animated series. If anyone's up for that, but also we're doing sporadic coverage of daredevil. You and David did a white Lotus episode recently and are going to do another at the end of the season. Yes, we did. And I'm, I'm really loving this season. It's a lot of fun. And I wish we were covering it in full. It's just like, how, how do we fit it in? I'm really enjoying this season as well.

[01:39:19] Um, but of course, yeah, we've got the full coverage of wheel of time. We've got, uh, the last of us coming up and or coming up where they just want to drop all the episodes on our head at once. Yeah. Stay tuned for plans on that. That's going to be fun. Yeah. Uh, and, and to explore the link tree in the show notes is where you'll find links to the season pass options and subscription options we talked about, but also all the affiliates like radioactive ramblings just wrapped up their coverage of the new invincible season, which I have to catch up on.

[01:39:48] But apparently it's quite good. People are really raving about invincible this season. Um, yeah. And, and all the rest do check out. Nevermind the music. Uh, you'll hear from Mark soon on talking about wheel of time. We'll shift dust. We're getting into dune now. Star Wars Canon timeline product podcast properly. How are there between seasons, right? Yeah, they are between seasons. They they're working on something. They might do some wrap up severance covers. They did a mid season check into, uh, but what we're going to do is,

[01:40:18] uh, severance wrap up where, so I don't know. Just stay tuned on the severance feed. Just stay tuned. Okay. And then do come and, uh, check in on the discord where we're talking about all of these things. We have all these kinds of channels set up. Um, and if you want to send in your feedback for the feedback episode, we definitely want to hear from you. Please send that to what W O T at the lorehounds.com. Yes. With plenty of feedback. We, I'm looking forward to that feedback episode. I see all the emails coming in.

[01:40:48] Nancy is, uh, on our, is our keeper of the Chronicles is handling the collation of that feedback and you might get an email back. Would she like to chat? Yes. Yeah. She likes to make sure that people know that they were seen and heard. Yes. Um, do you want to do the reading of the names before we turn to white tower talk? The reading of the names. Discord server. Sean and I decided that's what it's called. Okay. Fair enough. Uh, Aaron K. Tiller the Thriller. Dork of the Ninjas.

[01:41:17] Do 71. Athena A. Tina Lestu. Nancy M. Ghost of Perdition and Radioactive Richard. Those are our discord server boosters who help us get some bonus features on our discord. Thank you. Lore Masters. Our top tier patron and super cast subscribers are. Samarshan. Michael G. Michelle E. Brian P. SC. Peter O. H. Betina W. Adam S. Nancy M. Do 71. Brian 86. Free. Frederick H. Sarah L. Gareth C. Matthew M. Sarah M. DJ Miwa. Andra B. Kwong Yu. Dead Eye Jedi Bob. Nathan T.

[01:41:47] Alex V. Sub Zero. Aaron K. Dally V. Mothership 61. Narls. Kathy W. Lestu. Jeffrey B. Elisa U. Neil F. Ben B. Scott F. Steven N. Julia F. Collie S. Ilmariel. And Adrian. Thanks everyone. And this has been fun. Thank you. See you in the White Tower. The Lorehounds Podcast is produced and published by The Lorehounds.

[01:42:14] You can send questions, feedback, and voicemails at thelorehounds.com slash contact. Get early and ad-free access to all our episodes at patreon.com slash thelorehounds. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Okay, so let's talk about, well, first of all, that Rand said to Moraine, fate linked us up before we even met. And like, oh, buddy, you have no idea.

[01:42:42] But do you think, is she going to be Elaine's aunt in this version? Because it seems like she's obviously, she's met Elaine. And do you think, I guess she doesn't know that. No, of course she knows that. Yeah, maybe. And I don't think it matters either way. They could have it or not. She barely acknowledges it in the book. It's true. Yeah, but then I thought like maybe they could actually have a relationship built around

[01:43:10] that in the show because it's a nice way to tie these characters closer together. But I don't know. I don't think she's living long enough for that, to be honest. Or living in freedom long enough for that. Right. Yeah, I mean, we have to assume that she's going, I mean, there's not a door in Rodion here. So we don't know what's going to happen to her at the end of this. Right. Right. What if she does die, die? I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like it.

[01:43:39] There's such a powerful moment later when Rand bows to her and it's just like, yeah, thank you for everything. I just, if we, if you don't do that, what's the point? Yeah. I feel like it's also, it's important to Matt's story that he, you know, does all that stuff to rescue her. Yeah. I, no, yeah, no, they cannot kill her. I, I, absolutely not. Do you, do you have any other thoughts on what else she might have seen in the rings? I think she probably saw the tower of Genjai if, if they're doing that, whatever, whatever

[01:44:07] she's going to be in to be saved. She saw that because you have to have her cue them later to come rescue her. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah. We know from the previews, she says something like every future in which I live, Rand dies basically. So she thinks she has to die for Rand to live. Something she took away from it. Um, okay.

[01:44:32] So speaking of the tower of Genjai, so this revelation or this thing that people noticed that this, so Aleda has the shakes or, you know, she has something going on, a tremor in her hand that, uh, it does not exist in the books. And she has this bracelet with snakes and foxes on it. So does this mean has Aleda been to the tower and has she paid the price? That's a great question. Yes. I'm going to answer yes in the affirmative.

[01:45:03] Do you think like the foretelling was a gift from that? Or I wonder what the gift was she got that she paid the price for. Yeah. Maybe, maybe it's like you will, you will age faster than other eyes to die, but you will have the foretelling. Yeah. Like I can see it. When I was putting together the timeline, I didn't put her age in the timeline, but I did note it that she is indeed just barely older than Maureen. Right. Right. Right. In the books. In the books. Who knows in the show? Yeah. Obviously they're, they're signaling it's much older in the show.

[01:45:31] And they also, uh, signaled that Maureen was older than she is in the books in the show too. So, cause like Maureen's like at least 80 or something in the show. Yeah. And she's like, what? Like forties or fifties and maybe, maybe sixties in the book. But, but yeah, she was not very old for an eyes to die. Right. Right. Yeah. Oh, so I, maybe we should explain for people who just want to be spoiled and don't know, but the tower of Genji is this other alternate reality that some characters end up going to.

[01:46:01] And there are these creatures that are called the ale fin. There's two types. Is it the eel fin and the ale fin? Yeah. And, um, they are the snakes and the foxes. They are kind of snake-like and fox-like and they, I mean, we won't get too deep into it now, but like they basically, like I said, they give you gifts and extract a toll, but they have different functions between them and there's rules of interacting with them and they're really cool.

[01:46:27] And I'm very excited to see hints that they're coming. Right. Yeah. I, I really hope that they do it. They must be right. Like there's so many. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is not just like, oh, they're pet, pet. Book readers, we see you. I mean, it's, it's such a cool part of the story. I, I don't know why people, I think it's just like people want it so badly. They're afraid they're taking it out, but I don't think it makes sense to take this part out because it's so integral to so many different aspects of the story. Yeah.

[01:46:57] Like, look, could I see a version where they do similar character moments without the weirdness? Sure. Sure. But I just think it would take away from it. Like part of the joy of the wheel of time is the weirdest at times. Yeah. Don't, don't take this away from me. No, no. They can't take that away from me. Justin. Yeah. I don't think that they, I mean, I don't think they're shying away from the weirdness. I think if they're just trying to like streamline the lore just because there's so much of it.

[01:47:23] But this is one of the things that I think they should and will keep. But okay. So what do you think Avienda saw in the rings? I think she saw some baby making with Rand. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's the main thing that shocked her. Yeah. She sees Rand and she's like, oh shit. She's like, no. She's like, I did not think that, feel that way about you. Right. Right. But then when you see yourself making out with someone, you're like, or do I feel that way about you? I don't know.

[01:47:53] Right. Right. Well, it's not even she sees herself. She experienced it, right? Yeah. She's like, I just, I meant another nice redhead. Like, go back to that. Why not both? No. Yeah. I don't know. I think she saw probably like, maybe Ruark's death. That might be an interesting thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:48:19] I mean, I guess she might've seen herself like becoming less Aeol because she ends up spending a lot of time with these wetlanders. She like wakes up in a bath. She's like, ah. Drowning. Yeah. Help. She sees Gaul doesn't exist and she goes, ah, no. No, she, I don't know. Maybe she sees herself getting bonded as first sisters with Elaine.

[01:48:49] Right. Mm-hmm. That'd be interesting. Yeah. She sees good and she sees things that she's not sure she wants. Yeah. And probably just, you know, the whole realization of the prophecies where Rand and Deed will break them and save them at the same time. Right. Mm-hmm. So, I had a random thought. Okay. So, there are these images of the statues. I put a link in our notes. Maybe we want to include that link in the show notes if people want to look along.

[01:49:19] But so, these are, in the first season, we saw Stepin, the warder who ended up taking his own life because his Aes Sedai Karene was killed by Loghain. We see him the night before he takes his own life praying to these eight statues of the Forsaken. And so, we know that seven of the Forsaken names so far. And we know that four women are confirmed.

[01:49:46] So, we can see in these statues on the far right, clearly Graindol, big boobies. We haven't met Graindol on the show, but that's definitely her. Um, I think the one next to the light that's clearly female, that's Lanfear. And so, that means the ones on the left are Moghedian and Semaraj. And so, I think, or Semarag, they're calling it, even though there's an E at the end.

[01:50:09] Um, I think the one on the very left is Semarag, but something about, like, this hat figure thing that she's wearing kind of reminds me of what we saw Savannah with in this. And it just gave me, I don't know, I did a lot of thinking about, like, their storylines, and I don't see why this wouldn't work. But part of me wondered, what if they combined Semarag with Savannah?

[01:50:35] Who is, but what if they made her, what if they made Savannah not only a dark friend, but a Forsaken in this? And this is, again, full clown mask theory here that I just thought of based on the styling in this show. Just slowly paint it on as you go deeper into your theory. I don't think it would be a problem. I think it's fine. Like, again, you can combine people. I think they could have done a little more work to integrate the Forsaken in, in the middle. Like, there's just so many Forsaken in the books.

[01:51:04] And even with 15 books, I know you're going to tell me it's 15. I think it's 14 and a bonus. Hey, they fully adapted the first book into the first two seasons of this show. They did. They did, in fairness. That's the bonus, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. But so, what was I going to say? It's just, I think that they didn't really do it enough to develop some of them. Like, I just don't know Robin that well in the books. Like, he kind of just shows up and dies. Right.

[01:51:33] I think they've done a good job with Robin in the show so far, even though we've only seen him in two episodes. Yeah. Right. That's what I mean. It's like, I think they could do, you know, give more opportunities for these people to be developed in the show. Although Samarag comes in with the Shantan, with the, like, main group of Shantan, which is an interesting perspective to have, too. But also the Forsaken have been known to, they can travel. They can just, like, flip from one place to another. We kind of saw that happening with them coming to their meeting together. So.

[01:52:03] Yeah. And they can conceal their appearance, right? So, like, you could have different characters being Samaraj in the background. Yeah. It's true. It's true. Okay. So, those are the four females, and we know three of the men. So, if we look at the statues, the man next to Mogedion, I'm assuming that's Samael. He's short. He has a beard. It looks like maybe he has a scar on his face. I think next to that is Robin. He looks like a friendly lion face. Although, no, some people think that that's a Shamael.

[01:52:33] Hmm. Okay. And then that leaves these two between Lanfear and Greindel. And one of them's, like, kind of short. And I don't know. It's hard to say who that could be. Maybe that's Samael. I don't know. And then there's the tall one who has a musical instrument. And that's why I'm pointing him out. Because this is why people are clinging so hard to the final forsaken being as Mogedion. It's because of this statue with the musical instrument.

[01:53:03] And he is someone who comes in concealed as a gleamant. So, you could see them hiding his identity a little longer. Mm-hmm. Well, what you... I mean, so far, we've met, like, only Tom, really. Right. As a gleamant. And there was, like, one in the background that I thought for a minute. I was like, maybe that's Esmodian. But then we never saw him again. So... Do you want me to put on clown makeup and say Tom is Esmodian? No, I'm not going to say that. If they do that, that's a fatal mistake.

[01:53:33] Hmm. But I don't think they would do that. My point is, I could see them meeting him. Because they meet Jason Natale, who is Esmodian, on the way to Cold Rock's... What is it? Cold Rock's Hold. Oh, it's Hold. Yeah. So you think maybe, like, next episode we meet Esmodian? Yeah. I'd be okay with that. I mean, if... He has to come in right now. Because Esmodian's another one who doesn't...

[01:53:58] Like, he's there, and then he's gone, and then he's brought back, and then he's gone again mysteriously. And apparently off page we find out Grandal killed him. Um, so it seems like he'll be such a nothing if they introduce him now, unless they plan to change his story. Like, what if they made it as Modred, you know, combined him with Salmodred? I would be totally fine with that. I think Demandred is kind of mishandled in the books.

[01:54:26] I think he's just kind of... Again, like, Robert Jordan probably should have just left him as Mazrum Taim. He chickened out because people figured it out, but reward people for figuring it out. Don't be like, well, you figured it out. Now it's not going to be that. Wah, wah, wah. You think that's why he said... Because, okay, so Robert Jordan is famous for killing certain theories. Do you think that's why he killed that one? I think it's confirmed that he... That people had figured it out in book, like, six.

[01:54:54] And he's like, well, now Mazrum Taim is not Demandred. Ugh. Oh. I mean, I also wonder, because my... My pet theory that he killed was that Olver was Gaiden... What's his face? Brigitte's. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And he was just like, no, no, no. I just like to talk about how ugly the kid is for no reason. Like, okay. That's so funny. So I wonder if that would be a similar situation.

[01:55:23] But yeah, so there were people who hoped that in the show they would just make Taim Demandred. But Taim, they were talking about already being out and about last season. Whereas the Forsaken, as far as we know, everyone except for Ashamayon Lanphir was released just a month ago. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think having Asmodedren dead. I don't know. I can't do this. Asmodian and Demandred together would be great. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:55:51] I mean, I think we need the Demandred story later on for... It's important for Lan. It's important for Shara. Right. But they can definitely combine that. It could absolutely be fulfilled by another Forsaken. Here's an idea. You know, I know that in the books he gets a little further east. Oh, sorry. A little further west first before disappearing. But, you know, they get to Camelon, right? He disappears around Camelon.

[01:56:20] But what if he, Asmodian gets lost while they're still in the Waste and he's like, all right, I'm going to go east of Shara. Hmm. Okay. That makes more sense than just Demandred being like, I'm handling something somewhere else. Yeah. I also just... So, I think Loghain is going to be back this season. I mean, I hope so. But also, the actor was seen in the Czech Republic when they were filming. Um... And so, I thought they were setting it up so that he would take on...

[01:56:49] Because one of the most important things that Asmodian does is teach Rand how to channel. But they were kind of setting it up so that Loghain would do that, which... Okay. First, Asmodian on the one hand knows more because he's a Forsaken from the Age of Legends and all that. On the other hand, Loghain, that sets it up nicely for their power dynamics when they eventually set up the Black Tower together. Yeah. Hmm. So, I don't know. I could see that going other way. Yeah.

[01:57:19] Nah. Any other final full spoiler thoughts? I'm just very excited. Yes. I'm pumped. I want this to go on for 11, 12 seasons. I know it's max eight, but just keep it going. Take your time. Develop the characters. Yeah. I mean, do the eight seasons because I love it when people get to, you know, complete a plan like that. And then start with the spinoffs. Give us the Age of Legends show, please.

[01:57:49] I would, you know, sometimes be careful what you're wished for with that because sometimes things are more interesting when they're more mysterious. I'm not that kind of person. I'm like, tell me. But just make it good. Obviously, get good writers on it. But if they... Brian Herbert would like a word. I mean, I enjoy Brian Herbert's books, okay? I know. I know. I haven't read them, so I'm just poking fun. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if they kept this team of writers and just like move them over to another Wheel of Time world show.

[01:58:19] Other than the Age of Legends, what would you love to see an entire show about in that world? I would love them to take Robert Jordan's original idea of a sequel series with Matt in Shantian. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that would be cool because for anyone who doesn't know, he marries the Empress of the Shantian at the end of the book, so. Right. And then he... Robert Jordan wrote like two sentences about a sequel series, which was Matt down on his luck now.

[01:58:49] He doesn't have his luck anymore. Just sitting there with like no money as like kind of a beggar and like figuring out what he's doing next. And then Perrin is on a boat going to kill a friend. That's it. That's it. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And we know that and again, full spoilers here. So we know Rand is in another body. Right. And I would want Rand to barely show up in that series. Like have him show up, but like light touch.

[01:59:19] Rand's story is done. Sorry, Josha. Good luck in your next job. I mean, it's a different body anyway. It's a different body. Yeah, it wouldn't be. Yeah. Yeah. But I just mean like, I think that it's time to let the other characters shine after that. You know, like that is Rand's arc. Let Rand go on vacation. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I would love to also see like, oh, what if they did like a series on the Madlands? Oh, that'd be interesting.

[01:59:45] They cut off from everything that we know, but with the same rules, but a lot more madness. This feels very yellow jacket. Uh, yeah, it could be. It's a bad thing. All right. Well, let's make sure everyone watches the hell out of this series so that we can get those other ones too. Yep. All right. Well, thank you. Yeah. And thank you so much for talking through all this.

[02:00:13] And it was another long one, but this was also one of the biggest episodes probably in the entire show. Yeah. Don't worry. I think this was an appropriately length podcast for such a meaningful episode. Yeah. I mean, I can't wait to hear what everybody thinks. Please send us your feedback and we'll be talking through that. And that'll probably be the next episode in the public feed, I guess. Well, we'll see you on that feedback episode. Bye. Hey, everyone. David here.

[02:00:42] Severance is back. The Lorehounds are partnering with Properly Howard to bring you in-depth weekly coverage of season two. Join me, John, Anthony, and Steve as we unpack every twist, theory, and revelation. We've created a dedicated feed just for our Severance coverage. Simply search for Severance Lorehounds in your podcast app or find the direct link in our link tree.

[02:01:11] Our weekly episodes dig deep into the show's mysteries, themes, and bigger questions about identity and consciousness that makes Severance so compelling. Season Pass and regular community subscribers get ad-free access to our weekly episodes, plus exclusive content like our Supply Closet bonus series, featuring fascinating conversations with experts like the team from Nevermind the Music.

[02:01:37] We've explored the neuroscience of memory and personality, decoded the hidden meanings in the show's musical themes, and there's much more to come. You'll also get Steve and Anthony's complete season one rewatch series. We believe in total transparency with our listeners. And unlike Mammalians Nurturable, we're happy to share all of our secrets.

[02:02:03] Find the link for the Severance feed in the show notes below, or search Severance Lorehounds wherever you get your podcasts. Come theorize with us about what's really happening at Lumen. You're about to hear is merely a episode that thinks...